Announcement: Updates to Omega Noir

Posted October 3rd 2017 10:51 am

As I mentioned on September 27th, I've decided to make some major changes to Omega Noir. This decision has been coming for quite some time, ever since the first draft was, well, drafted at the start of Nanowrimo 2016. I was hoping to get the first book written, edited, and published by the end of 2016. Well, that didn't happen.

2017 came and while I had a proof copy of Omega Noir in my hands, and fairly positive reviews from my fellow Beta Readers, the story just didn't sit right. Hence, the start of Draft #2!

But that draft didn't last more than 20 pages before I wrote myself into a corner and couldn't get out.

Hence (don't you love these fancy words?), Draft #3! Draft #3 took me somewhere between 4-5 months to hand-write (my current full-time job didn't allow laptops at work, so I had to hand-write the whole manuscript). Although it was 325 hand-written pages of what I thought was a great story, my initial editing said otherwise.

Which brings me to now.

The Reason for the Changes

If there is one thing I hate to admit, it's that my villains are...not so villiain-y. Their motives are lacking, their character structure lacks cohesion, and they're somewhat good guys (although I know that "Every villain is the hero of their own story," my villains relate more with the heroes than villains). This drove me nuts over the past few weeks. Additionally, I felt like the latter half of the story was more of "filler" than of actual content.

So although it saddens me to disregard ~200 pages of story, I will take what I have and begin (somewhat) anew. This means I am flipping the personalities of the two most powerful characters in the story, re-working the primary story event to be more dramatic, and completely rewriting the climax.

And one more thing: the title.

The title?

Yes, although "Omega Noir" is a great title, it seems like a better marketing move to rename the series (if all else fails, I can go back to the original title, but I don't want to rely on that).

It does mean that some design modifications are to be made, but that will come later. On to Draft 3.5!

Wait...so when will Omega NoirLight My Fire be out?

Well, since I'm basically semi-restarting the manuscript, my hope is that the first book, which is still subtitled "Ascension," will be out by Christmas 2017, which puts me on a really tight deadline. Realistically, Spring or Summer of 2018, depending on my work situation.